This call for papers is for a panel to be held at Permeability and Selfhood,the McGill Graduate Conference on Language and Literature, which will takeplace March 11-12 at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Please email paper abstracts of approximately 300 words.

You can direct submissions to melissa.fink_at_mail.mcgill.ca by January 5,2006.

Thanks for your interest, please let me know if you have any questions.

This panel will explore textual expressions of gender in autobiographicalrepresentations of identity and self. Writers including Audre Lorde andLeslieFeinberg adopt autobiographical narrative as an outlet through which tovalidatedeviant gender identities. These texts provide a forum for self-affirmation,aswell as a means to social recognition and increased understanding. Thispanelis explicitly interested in bodies that resist normative expressions ofgender,including but certainly not limited to: working-class bodies,differently-abledbodies, queer bodies, and bodies of colour. The panel seeks to understandhowdeviant bodies are textually represented, as well as how autobiographicalnarrative rewrites and reclaims stigmatized gender identities.

Some questions this panel could address are:

How are autobiographical narratives explicitly gendered—or, how does genderdetermine the narration of self?

What is the role of the reader in problematizing, challenging or validatingatextual identity?

How is systematic oppression or violence represented within identitynarratives?

How might race, class, sexuality, ability, or other components of identityintersect with gender in autobiographical narratives?

How do autobiographical texts promote or sustain traditionally-invisiblizedportraits of self?